Interesting. Your remarks on tunnelling dovetail nicely with an excellent article by Sean Corrigan at LewRockwell.com:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/corrigan/corrigan13.html Corrigan refers to privatization, as part of IMF-imposed "structural adjustments", as a carpet-bagger strategy for enabling international financial classes to buy up taxpayer-funded assets for pennies on the dollar. This discussion reminds me of something I heard second-hand about the Austrian economist and anarcho-capitalist Hans Hermann Hoppe. I've yet to read it myself, so take it for what it's worth. Anyway, he argued that the ex-Communist states were the one proper area for implementing syndicalist control of industry, since the original ownership was hopelessly muddled or moot, and the state industry thus qualified as "unowned property" in the Lockean sense. It was therefore quite logical to treat the workforce as occupiers or homesteaders, and place it under their collective ownership. Anyway, it sounds to me a lot better than turning the product of seventy years stolen labor of the Russian people over to domestic and international elites at fire sale prices, and then turning the country into a big sweatshop. On a related note, in the "Tranquil Statement" of the YAF's Radical Libertarian Caucus, Karl Hess argued that radical student occupations of even private universities wasn't a violation of any valid private property right, because such nominally "private" institutions were almost entirely dependant on the state's subsidies. Therefore, they should be treated as unowned, and "homesteaded" by students or faculty--in many ways a return to the original medieval idea of the university. I've also been told that Rothbard, at one point, (in the late 60s, I think, at the height of his affinity for the New Left) called for the expropriation of any corporation that got more than half its profits from state capitalist intervention, and its being placed under workers' control instead. The agorist Samuel Edward Konkin, another Austrian radical, speaks of a period of restitution in which the property of statists will be seized to pay back what they consumed through robbery of the producing classes. For "privatization" in this country, there's a lot to be said for what Larry Gambone calls "mutualizing" state property as an alternative both to corporate capitalist privatization and to state ownership. It entails devolving social services, police, schools, etc., to the local level, and then placing them under the direct democratic control of their clientele--sort of like transforming them into consumer co-ops. The ultimate goal, of course, is to fund them on a user-fee basis and make consumption voluntary. It's quite a bit like what Proudhon called (in *General Idea of the Revolution*) dissolving the state within the social body. >From: Grey Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: RE: North on ideology -- Free Markets, & Marketeers -- tunneling >Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 11:22:22 +0200 > > > quoth Tom Grey: > > > . . . For instance, the need for government to prevent "tunneling" > > > of newly privatized companies by the managers. . . . > > > > Define please? > >It's basically asset stripping, in any of sundry ways. >Asset stripping has occurred in almost all newly privatized Slovak firms. > >A few ways I know of: >1) The new manager, often part owner, creates a new brand name for >the product the newly privatized company is making. This brand name >is owned by a little company wholly owned by the manager. The production >company pays millions for the brand name. -- production company has >losses, the little company is quite profitable, but prolly off shore and >untaxed. >2) The new owner's wife or son writes up a "strategic" or "marketing" >plan, some 5-20 pages of BS to lay a shelf; to get millions in fees. >3) Older but working, high-market value production equipment is sold at >almost zero "book value" (near end of depreciated life). >4) The production company builds a mansion, pays millions; sells it to >the owner's little company at a huge loss. Similarly with luxury cars. > >Here in Slovakia, accounting form requirements are rather strict; but >the first three above are entirely legal. I'm not sure on the details of >(4) in order to make it legal, but I strongly suspect certain perpetrators >have legal opinions on how to do it legally -- in accordance with required >form based reporting. > >The failure of the Klaus voucher privatization plan was that the mostly >minority >owners had no real way of stopping the top managers from asset stripping. >Ownership got dispersed, but it became ownership of debts without assets; >select (mostly ex-commie) managers ended up with most of the assets. >That's one of the main reasons so many ex-commie countries have voters >unhappy >with "the free markets". ... and then they vote tough ex-commies into >office :( >(The problem with democracy? People get the gov't they deserve!) > >Most ex-commie judicial systems are also completely unable to cope with the >huge increase in clearly illegal actions, so there is little chance of >hoping >for any legal redress. My wife and I paid for a small flat in Oct 95, >after >looking at it and being assured it would be complete by December. In the >purchase there was stiff penalties if late. Almost immediately after we >paid, >construction halted ... for a year! We got it in Dec 96, but no penalty >money. >We sued, in early 97. They agreed to pay penalties, they haven't. VERY >clear. >We've been waiting (no bribes to judges). Finally, April this year, we >"won". >But now the Drustvo (co-operative) is appealing, so we're waiting, some >more. >Oh, and there will be no interest on the money we eventually get. >In general, the courts don't quite work. > >I think the "aid" community has become more clearly aware of this, and are >focusing now, much more than 10 years ago, on: rule of law, property rights >(& >titles), and corporate governance. (See CIPE, for instance on Africa) >http://www.cipe.org/fs/articles/gatamah.php3 > >Hope this is helps understanding. > >Tom Grey > _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
